Hungary is committed to hosting in late spring a large-scale business forum of the chamber of industry and trade set up by the Turkic Council member states, Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, said at an online summit meeting of the Turkic Council on Wednesday.
 
The forum will pave the way for inter-company cooperation in major joint investment projects to be launched soon, he said. The prime minister noted that Hungary had been admitted to the Turkic Council as an observer three years ago. Since then, its diplomacy has laid great emphasis on boosting ties with the member states of the council, he said.

Raising relations to the level of strategic partnership and establishing a diplomatic mission in each country were priorities for Hungary, he said. In the last phase of this process

 
Hungary and Uzbekistan signed a declaration on strategic partnership
 
on Tuesday, and a Hungarian embassy opened in Kyrgyzstan recently, Orbán said.
 

 

Orbán noted that Hungary’s trade turnover with Turkic Council member states increased by 3 percent last year while global trade plummeted by 9 percent. Further,

five thousand young people from the Turkic countries applied for Hungarian universities and colleges this year,

he said.

Orbán confirmed Hungary’s intention to join the Turkic investment fund and contribute central funds to it so as to create a financial background to development projects.

He noted that Hungary had been the only EU member state pragmatic enough to use eastern vaccines in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, adding that all the other EU member states were motivated by ideological considerations when they rejected the Chinese and Russian vaccines.